1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains generally to a fuel manufacturing apparatus, and more particularly to an apparatus for converting flammable material, such as waxed cardboard, into compact artificial firelogs or firestarter chips.
2. Description of the Background Art
The popularity of log burning fireplaces as an amenity and as a supplemental source of heat continues to grow. With cutting restrictions on Government land, as well as the closing of many wood processing plants, wood logs can be difficult and expensive to obtain. As a result, artificial firelogs have been gaining in popularity.
Boxes and containers made from cardboard are widely used in an almost infinite variety of applications such as packaging, shipping and storage of goods and the like. As such, there is an abundant supply of discarded cardboard boxes readily available for recycling. It has been recognized that discarded cardboard boxes form a potential fuel material, and the general concept of converting used or discarded cardboard boxes into burnable firelogs has been applied with some level of success.
Machines have been developed to convert such cardboard boxes into compact burnable firelogs. Such machines include a feed system, such as a hammermill, for receiving a sheet of cardboard into the cutting system, a cutting mechanism for slicing the cardboard sheet into strips and then cutting the strips into chips and a compacting/compressing using a punch press assembly for shaping the chips into compact firelog structures which can be burned in a fireplace. Binders, such as glue, are used to hold the chips together after compression. Additionally, the finished firelogs can be dipped into wax for a outer wax coating to enhance their burn capability. These machines are, however, designed to cut and shape plain cardboard boxes, i.e. without a wax or like coating thereon.
There exists a problem relating to recycling certain types of cardboard boxes. Wax-coated corrugated cardboard boxes, which are commonly coated with a paraffin-based wax, are generally non-recyclable because, in normal re-pulping systems, the wax is very expensive to separate from the corrugated cardboard efficiently. Thus, used wax-coated corrugated cardboard boxes are usually discarded in landfills. In view of present interests regarding conservation of resources and environmental consciousness, the ability to reuse such discarded material in a form of fuel would serve to reduce the demand for other types of fuels, such as oil, gas or coal, thus further conserving natural resources and preserving the environment.
Additionally, these machines destroy the corrugation within the cardboard, preventing the flow and permeation of wax and oxygen through the firelog, resulting in an incomplete and inefficient burning of the firelog. Moreover, such machines produce firelogs having "cold joints" at the intervals between punches or presses. Cold joint are weak links within the firelog that are easily separated when any shear or tensile force is exerted thereon, resulting in multiple sections of broken firelogs.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an artificial firelog manufacturing apparatus that provides the capability to recycle pre-waxed corrugated cardboard boxes into firelogs that are more structurally rigid and that burn more efficiently over that presently known in the art. The present invention satisfies those needs, as well as others, and overcomes the deficiencies found currently known artificial firelog producing machines.